The Physical Existence of Emotions

Robert Plutchik introduced the ‘Wheel of Emotions’ as an emotion clarification system in the 1980s. Similar to the colour wheel that we are so familiar with, the wheel of emotions demonstate how different emotions can be combined together.

Plutchik suggested that there are 8 primary emotional dimensions:

1. Happiness Vs. Sadness
2. Anger Vs. Fear
3. Trust Vs. Disgust
4. Surprise Vs. Anticipation

Like an aritsts mixes primary colours to create secondary ones, these primary emotions can be combined. For example, happiness and anticipation might combine to create excitement.

I have been exploring the idea of using the concept of the ‘wheel of emotions’ for my work. I have booked one of the photography studios for Tuesday to take some headshots of different facial expressions and will experiment with combining them on Photoshop CS6.

I have been really excited by ideas the last few days and finally feel like I’m returning to my usual self. I am waking up excited by ideas and possibilites but whats more is I have started putting in the action needed to make them happen.

We have 16 weeks left until Assesment day which means I have 16 weeks to prove to myself that I made the right decision 3 years ago.

I have been doing a lot of research into theories of emotion and have been come really interested in the concepts that are explored. I became interested in a particular theory in Hockenbury, D. H. & Hockenbury, S. E. (2007). Discovering Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers. The theory defines an emotion as such:

An emotion is a complex psychological state that involves three distinctive components:

1. A Subjective Experience.
2. A Physiological Response.
3. A Behavioural or Expressive Response.

The Subjective Experience

Many of the psychologists that I explored believe that there a number of basic universal emotions that can be experienced regardless of culture or background. It is also suggested that the experience of emotion can be highly subjective. It is evident that society holds broad labels for certain emotions such as ‘angry’, ‘sad’ or ‘happy’ however these researchers argue that an individuals own experience of these emotions is far more multi-dimensional.

For example, is all happiness the same? An individuals own experience might range from contempt to ecstatic.

It is also suggested that we do not always experience ‘pure’ forms of each emotion. An individual may experience mixed emotions about different events or situations. these emotions may occur simultaneously, or they may be felt one after another.

The Physiological Response

It is argued that emotions cause strong physiological reactions, for example, your heart palpating from fear or your stomach lurching from anxiety. Researches say that many of the physical reactions an individual might experience during an emotion are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. For example, sweaty palms, racing heartbeat or rapid breathing. the automatic nervous system controls involuntary body responses sun as blood flow and digestion.

While early studies of the physiology of emotion tend to focus on these autonomic responses, more recent research has targeted the brains role in these emotions.

Brain scans have shown that the amygdala itself is a tiny, almond shaped structure that has been linked to motivational states such as hunger and thirst as well as memory and emotion. Researchers have used brain imaging to show that when people are shown threatening images, the amygdala becomes activated,

The Behavioural Response 

the final component is the one that I was most familiar with, the actual expression of emotion. we spend a significant amount of time interpreting the emotional expressions of the people around us,

our ability to accurately understand these expressions is tied to what psychologists call emotional intelligence and these expressions play a major part in our overall body language.

Credit to :  Hockenbury, D. H. & Hockenbury, S. E. (2007). Discovering Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers.

Today I have been using Photoshop CS6 to digitally manipulate an image of the human anatomy to suggest anger within the body. To do this I added images of smoke in separate layers and overlaid them. I explored different opacity settings and blending options to ensure the smooth transition between each layer. To do this I followed different tutorials from the following two books:

Evening, M. (2014) Adobe Photoshop CC for photographers, 2014 release: A professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC. United Kingdom: CRC Press.  and Kelby, S. (2012)

The adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 book for digital photographers. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press Publications.

I am quite pleased with the outcome of this image because I believe it does represent the emotion physically however I think I may fine tune the image as I continue to develop my Photoshop technical ability.

An idea I have been working on has centralised around providing a viewpoint into the human anatomy. For a while I contemplated different ways in which I would be able to do this. Finally I have decided on using discarded shop mannequins as the framework for my work. I have cut sections out of each mannequin providing just enough space to work with. I am planning on having five different mannequins in total, each representing a different emotion. The emotions that I have chosen to represent are: Love, Envy, Anger, Depressed and Excitement. I am now currently working on ways in which I can materialise my thoughts an ideas.

I spent a lot of time pen at the ready trying desperately to understand where I was going wrong during the most of my first semester of this year. It wasn’t until I referred back to the project I was most proud of that I finally realised. I have been trying to change who I am. I am not’ a painter’. I am not ‘a photographer’. I am not ‘a printmaker’. I am A Artist. I don’t need to define my work by the medium I use and limit myself to my technical abilities. I define my work in the following ways: Idea, Journey, Solution, Outcome. I have spent much of my artist journey through UCS looking at the human form. Looking being the key word. No wonder my work wasn’t building any fathomable emotion within myself or my viewers. I need to EXPLORE the human form and for the purpose of my final year I have decided to explore the human form in terms of emotions. For how do we know how a person is truly feeling, after all we can only perceive what a person wants us to. Not many people would know how I really felt over the last two and a half years. Also how could I expect them to? For example, how do I know that what I consider to be the emotional connotations of fear is the same as what you consider them to be. It was this thought that led me into the idea that my work centralises. What if emotions existed in a physical state. Surly that would make it easier for our feelings to be transferable. If we could see what an emption really looked like then maybe, just maybe we would have a better understanding of it. This is the concept that I tend to explore over the duration of my time left at UCS.